Life on Enceladus?

Enceladus geyers, courtesy NASA

I wrote previously about the possibility that life might be discovered in the oceans of Saturn's moon Enceladus, and I proposed that genetic testing would show it to be related to life on Earth. So how did it get there all the way from Earth?

Note what the article says: "The salt is the same familiar sodium chloride found in our oceans..." What if, at some point in the Earth's history (say, about 4,000 years ago), a great deal of water from underneath the crust spewed out, some of it raining down salty water over the Earth and into our oceans, and some it reaching escape velocity? Do we have any record of this?

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month--on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. (Genesis 7:11)

Living organisms may not turn up on other planets, but if they do, this would  explain how they got there. On reaching space, the water would flash-freeze, preserving any bacteria and small forms of life contained in it. The sun would drive a form of evaporative jetting much as comets do, sending the ice crystals spiraling out to the outer solar system where they would be captured by the gravity of the outer giants and rain down on their moons. On Enceladus, with the ice melting beneath the surface, some of the bacteria might revive and grow. The likelihood of this happening is slim, but more likely than life coming from non-life. As Pasteur demonstrated, all life is from life. You can read more about this Enceladus scenario in my novel, Beyond Earth.